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Pre-Roll Ads: To Annoy or Not To Annoy
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iFilm is rife with annoying distractions; AtomFilms has 'em, too. So do AOL, MSN and MTV's Overdrive, just to name a few. It's called pre-roll advertising, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the ad-spots that run before many online shorts have the potential to turn away viewers. No, really?
"Over time, users might choose to go to sites which don't have these kinds of ads," Gokul Rajaram, a Google director of product management, told the Journal. Google Video is one of a few companies (along with Revver and Grouper) that don't include pre-rolls ads, even though they're a potentially big source of revenue for the burgeoning online video sector.
According to the article, AOL has put a 15-second cap on its ads, to keep from distracting audiences too much, while an NBC exec suggests pre-roll advertisers are in the middle of experimenting with various lengths on NBC affiliate sites.
Like any new entertainment business, the industry is stuck trying to balance bottom-line dollar concerns with the simple fact that advertising bugs people. If some savvy new tech entrepreneur could come up with a fast-forwarding TiVo device for web video, they might be onto something: iFilm would certainly be a lot more fun to visit.
